100%: the Story of a Patriot eBook

Yes, that was true, but it hadn’t done Peter
much good. Miriam bad been interested in Mac—­in
Mac, that most dangerous devil, who had given Peter
so many anxious hours! She had brushed Peter to
one side, she had hardly been willing to listen to
what he said; and now she was trying to use that love
she had spurned!

She had got hold of his hand, and he could not get
it away from her without violence. “If
you ever felt a spark of love for a woman,”
she cried, “surely you cannot deny such a favor—­such
a little favor! Please, Peter, for the sake of
old times!”

Suddenly Peter started, and Miriam too. There
came a voice from the doorway. “So this
is one of your lady friends, is it?” And there
stood Gladys, staring, rigid with anger, her little
hands clenched. “So this is one of your
Red sweethearts, one of your nationalized women?”
And she stamped her foot. “Get up, you hussy!
Get up, you slut!” And as Miriam continued to
kneel, motionless with surprise, Gladys rushed at
her, and clutched two handfuls of her heavy black
hair, and pulled so that Miriam fell prone on the floor.
“I’ll teach you, you free lover!”
she screamed. “I’ll teach you to make
love to my husband!” And she dragged Miriam
about by that mop of black hair, kicking her and clawing
her, until finally several of the bulls had to interfere
to save the girl’s life.

As a matter of fact Gladys had been told about Peter’s
shameful past before she married him; Guffey had told
her, and she had told Peter that Guffey had told her,
she had reminded Peter of it many, many times.
But the actual sight of one of these “nationalized
women” had driven her into a frenzy, and it
was a week before peace was restored in the Gudge
family. Meantime poor Peter was buffeted by storms
of emotion, both at home and in his office. They
were getting ready the first Red train, and it seemed
as if every foreign Red that Peter had ever known
was besieging him, trying to get at him and harrow
his soul and his conscience. Sadie Todd’s
cousin, who had been born in England, was shipped
out on this first train, and also a Finnish lumberman
whom Peter had known in the I. W. W., and a Bohemian
cigar worker at whose home he had several times eaten,
and finally Michael Dubin, the Jewish boy with whom
he had spent fifteen days in jail, and who had been
one of the victims of the black-snake whippings.

Michael made no end of wailing, because he had a wife
and three babies, and he set up the claim that when
the “bulls” had raided his home they had
stolen all his savings, two or three hundred dollars.
Peter, of course, insisted that he could do nothing;
Dubin was a Red and an alien, and he must go.
When they were loading them on the train, there was
Dubin’s wife and half a hundred other women,
shrieking and wringing their hands, and trying to break
thru the guards to get near their loved ones.
The police had to punch them in the stomachs with
their clubs to hold them back, and in spite of all
these blows, the hysterical Mrs. Dubin succeeded in
breaking thru the guards, and she threw herself under
the wheels of the train, and they were barely able
to drag her away in time to save her life. Scenes
like this would, of course, have a bad effect upon
the public, and so Guffey called up the editors of
all the newspapers, and obtained a gentleman’s
agreement that none of them would print any details.